Tag Archives: moses and passover

We had seen how Rsi Abraham’s sacrifice of his son Isaac was a sign pointing to the sacrifice of Jesus. After Abraham died, his descendants through this son Isaac, now called Israelites, had become a vast number of people but also had become slaves in Egypt.

The Passover Festival

So we now come to a very dramatic struggle that is centered through a man called Moses and which is recorded in the Hebrew Veda of Exodus in the Bible. It is so named because it is the account of how Moses led the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt 500 years years after Abraham, about 1500 BC. Moses had been commanded by The Creator God (Prajapati) to confront the Pharaoh (ruler) of Egypt and it resulted in a contest of wills between Moses and Pharaoh. This contest has also produced nine plagues or disasters against Egypt. But Pharaoh had not agreed to let the Israelites go free so God was going to bring about a 10th and final plague. You can read the full account of the 10th Plague in Exodus through the link here since it will help you in following the explanation below.

This 10th plague decreed by God was that an Angel (Spirit) of Death would pass through every house in Egypt. Every firstborn son in the entire land would die on that specific night except those that remained in houses where a lamb had been sacrificed and its blood painted on the doorposts of that house. The destruction to Pharaoh, if he did not obey and paint lamb’s blood on his door, would be that his son and heir to the throne would die. And every house in Egypt would lose the firstborn son – if they did not sacrifice a lamb and paint its blood on the doorposts. So Egypt faced a national disaster.

But in houses where a lamb had been sacrificed and its blood painted on the doorposts the promise was that everyone would be safe. The Angel of Death would pass over that house. So this day was called Passover (since death passed over all houses where lamb’s blood had been painted on the doors).

The Passover Sign

Now those who have heard this story assume that the blood on the doors was a sign for the Angel of Death. But notice the curious detail taken from the account written 3500 years ago.

The LORD said to Moses … ” … I am the LORD. The blood [of the Passover lamb] will be a sign for you on the houses where you are; and when I see the blood, I will pass over you. (Exodus 12:13)

Though God was looking for the blood on the door, and when He saw it Death would pass over, the blood was not a Sign for God. It says quite clearly, that the blood was a ‘sign for you’ – the people. It is also a Sign for all of us who read this account. But how is it a sign? An important clue is that after this event happened the LORD commanded them to:

Celebrate this day as a lasting ordinance for generations to come. When you enter the land … observe this ceremony… It is the Passover sacrifice to the LORD’ (Exodus 12:27)

Jewish man with lamb at Passover

The Israelites were commanded to celebrate Passover on the same day every year. The Jewish calendar, being a lunar calendar, is a little different from the Western calendar, so the day in the year changes each year if you track it by the Western calendar. But to this day, still 3500 years later, Jewish people continue to celebrate Passover as a festival on the same date every year in memory of this event in obedience to that command given then.

Passover Sign pointing to the Lord Jesus

And in tracking this festival through history we can note something quite extraordinary. You can notice this in the Gospel where it records the details of the arrest and trial of Jesus (1500 years after that First Passover plague):

“Then the Jews led Jesus … to the palace of the Roman governor [Pilate]… to avoid ceremonial uncleanness the Jews did not enter the palace; they wanted to be able to eat the Passover” … [Pilate] said [to Jewish leaders] “…But it is your custom for me to release to you one prisoner at the time of the Passover. Do you want me to release ‘the king of the Jews’?” They shouted back, “No not him…” (John 18:28, 39-40)

In other words, Jesus was arrested and sent for crucifixion right on the Passover day in the Jewish calendar. One of the titles given to Jesus was

The next day John (i.e. John the Baptist) saw Jesus coming toward him and said, “Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world. This is the one I meant when I said ‘A man who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me’”. (John 1:29-30)

Here we see how the Passover drama is a Sign to us. Jesus, the ‘Lamb of God’, was crucified (i.e. sacrificed) on the very same day of the year that all the Jews were sacrificing a lamb in memory of the first Passover that had occurred 1500 years before. This explains the annual timing of two holidays that re-occurs every year – a parallel that so few of us notice and even fewer ask ‘Why?’ The Jewish Passover Festival occurs almost every year at the same time as the Christian Easter festival does – check a calendar. (Every 19th year there is a divergence of a month due to the cycle of lunar-based leap years in the Jewish calendar). This is why Easter moves every year because it is based on Passover, and Passover is timed by the Jewish calendar which calculates the year differently than the Western Calendar.

Now think for a minute about what ‘signs’ do. You can see some signs below here.

A Sign of India

Commercial Signs to make us think of McDonalds and Nike

The flag is a sign or symbol of India. We do not ‘see’ just a rectangle with an orange and a green band across it. No, we think of India when we see the flag. The sign of the ‘Golden Arches’ makes us think about McDonalds. The sign of the ‘√’ on tennis player Nadal’s headband is the sign for Nike. Nike wants us to think of them when we see this sign on Nadal. In other words, Signs are pointers in our minds to direct our thinking to the desired object.

The Passover account in the Hebrew Veda of Exodus explicitly said that the Sign was for the people, not for Creator God (though He would still look for the blood and pass over the house if he saw it). As with any sign, what did He want our minds to think of when we look to Passover? With the remarkable timing of lambs being sacrificed on the same day as Jesus, it must be a pointer to the sacrifice of Jesus.

It works in our minds like I have shown in the diagram below. The sign was there to point us to the sacrifice of Jesus.

The exact timing of sacrifice of Jesus to Passover is a Sign

In that first Passover the lambs were sacrificed and the blood spread so the people could live. And thus, this Sign pointing to Jesus is to tell us that he, ‘The Lamb of God’, was also given as a sacrifice to death and his blood spilt so we could receive life.

We saw in Sign of Abraham that the place where Abraham was tested with the sacrifice of his son was Mount Moriah. A lamb died so Abraham’s son could live. Mount Moriah was the

The Sign of Abraham was pointing to the location

very same place where Jesus was sacrificed. That was a Sign to make us ‘see’ the meaning of his death by pointing to the place. In the Passover we find another pointer to Jesus’ sacrifice – by pointing to the same day in the year. A lamb sacrifice is once again used – showing that it is not just a coincidence of any event – to point to the sacrifice of Jesus. In two different ways (through location and through timing) two of the most important festivals in the sacred Hebrew Vedas directly point to the sacrifice of Jesus. I cannot think of any other person in history whose death is so foreshadowed by such parallels in such dramatic fashion. Can you?